SHANE SMITH

Shane Smith is a Canadian Emmy Award-winning journalist and media executive. He is the co-founder and Executive Chairman of the international media company Vice Media, operating an international network of digital channels, a television production studio, a record label, an in-house creative services agency, a book-publishing house, and a feature film division. Smith served as CEO of Vice from its founding until March 2018.

“Young people today have been marketed to since they were newborns because cartoons are made to sell cereal. So as a consequence they have the most sophisticated bullshit detectors of all time. And the only way to circumvent that bullshit detector is to not bullshit. So if something is created in a boardroom. If something is created by consensus. If something is created by a bunch of Baby Boomers who say it will be cool we are going to do skateboarding or something, it will not work.”

“Early on I was more of a businessman because I had to be, because we didn’t have money. Now our creative director Spike Jonze asked me, he said, what would you do if you take money out of the equation? What would you be doing? And I said, I would do less of this & more of this… And he said do it. All of a sudden we started making more money and now we can take money out of the equation and it becomes fun. I don’t know where work ends and fun starts because it is so fun.”

“If your talking about climate change. If your talking about a gun to our heads environmentally. If your talking about the potential threat of nuclear war. That should be a punch in the face. What are we doing? Where are all of the adults????”